When Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss died last week, it didn't take long for the conversation to turn to his place among the best owners in the history of sports.

Perhaps it's only fitting that the disastrous public reappearance of Jeffrey Loria renewed debate this week over who is the worst.

In the city of Miami, there is no debate. The Marlins owner is so reviled he might want to avoid going to his year-old stadium lest he find a mob ready to run him out of town.

His payroll is so low the team he will trot out opening day would have trouble competing in the Pacific Coast League, much less the National League.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are on the hook for a $634 million stadium that might have more tropical fish swimming around inside than fans in the stands.

If he's not the worst owner ever, it's only because there's a lot of competition for the title. The late owner of the Cincinnati Reds, Marge Schott, comes to mind, so does Robert Irsay, who fled Baltimore in the middle of the night and took the city's beloved NFL Colts with him.

But Loria is certainly in the top five.

His decision this week to embark on a public relations campaign to convince fans he was right to trade the team's top talent - Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, among others - because he wanted to make the Marlins better, reeked of arrogance. It didn't work mostly because Loria acted the way he always acts - like he's the smartest person in the room.

Maybe he is. This is a guy, after all, who parlayed a small investment in the Montreal Expos into ownership of a team and a new stadium in Miami.

He got handouts from Major League Baseball for years, and got lucky with a World Series winner a decade ago. Now he's got fans paying the freight - and rewarded them with a team so devoid of talent that the payroll is expected to be only $45 million this season, the lowest in baseball.

The trouble with smart people, though, is that sometimes they begin to believe their own press releases. That seems to be the case with Loria, who hired a high-powered PR firm to try to mend his image in South Florida and, more importantly, convince people they should spend more of their money at his ballpark.

The campaign began with his open letter to the citizens of Miami defending everything he's done and promising good times just around the next corner.

"We're in this together and I humbly ask that we start fresh, watch us mature quickly as a ball club, and root for the home team in 2013," Loria wrote.

That went over about as well as former manager Ozzie Guillen praising Fidel Castro in Little Havana last season. But it got worse when Loria met the press, not all of whom seemed to be on board with the idea that the Marlins need to make their owner more money before they can be competitive.